For the Best Dressed Girl in our class, Emily Rose won
the bag of sweets, which was no surprise. She did not come to school with her
hair all done up and in a fancy, fluffy outfit. She was wearing her normal pink
dress, and the only thing different was that she had a necklace on.
She didn’t win because of that; she won because she
was the only girl to participate.
Poppy Petal didn’t sign up for it because she was far
too busy reading her book to care. She only ever participated in Story Writing
Competitions and the End of Year Spelling Bee – which, by the way, was
compulsory.
Cinnamon Stix stated she was too modest and down to
earth to enter a Best Dressed Competition.
And Laura Sunset, as you can imagine, had forgotten.
All of us boys entered the competition. I came in my
green hoodie, with the zip half undone and stood around with my hands in my
pockets. Mrs. Freckles, the dinner lady, an enemy to us all (except for her
son, Will Freckles) stated that I looked more like a gangster than a school
boy.
Choco Stix and Billy Snooze came in their
everyday-clothes but were wearing caps to match. Billy Snooze was wearing his
to the side, while Choco had his backwards. They both said it made them look
“cooler”.
Eric Redmane went overboard with the “coolness” and
wore a pair of dark shades, even indoors!
Tom Sandy wore a suit and clip-on tie, while Will
Freckles put on a top hat.
Of course, the teachers thought Tom looked the
“neatest”, and chose him as the winner. None of us thought it was fair and even
Tom Sandy was surprised.
“My mum made me wear this,” he whispered to us after
his name was called, “I never thought I’d win!”
“Will you share?” I asked, “The sweets?” But he had
already gone ahead to claim his prize.
“What did he say?” called Choco, a few rows back.
“He didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no.” I replied.
Eric took off his sunglasses, “Then it’s a no.” He cleaned the lenses with an
expression that read: You let me down! “Whenever they don’t reply, it’s because
they are secretly saying ‘no’.”
“The traitor!”Will cried, “I knew we never should have trusted him!’’ This was not true. Will
was the one nobody trusted to keep a promise. Tom was always true to his word.
Billy Snooze chose this moment to collapse to the
floor in front of me. If there was someone new in the playground, they would
have thought Billy had fainted. But this was not so. Billy was very lazy and
liked to fall asleep whenever he felt like it, which was often. Normally one of
the teachers would try and wake him up, but today all eyes were on the Best Dressed
students.
After taking his bag of sweets, Tom Sandy went up and
stood next to Emily Rose. He shifted uncomfortably from side to side. All the
kids lined up together to take a group photo. Half the kids looked shy while
the other half posed like snobs. Then Mr. Principle, the Principal, announced,
“You may return to your classes.”
The half that had stood around shyly hurried off while
the half that posed like snobs dilly-dallied by combing their hair, or fiddling
with their shoes, pretending they hadn’t heard Mr. Principle. They wanted as
much time in the spotlight as possible.
To our surprise, Tom Sandy walked right passed us and
stood at the back of the line, not facing us. Emily was already handing out
some sweets to everyone. She even offered to us boys, but we didn’t want to eat
anything out of a pink bag. She even offered to some of the kids from the other
class! And then there was Tom, ignoring us even though he was supposed to be handing out sweets like
Emily.
Mr. Principle told us all to file back to our
classrooms. Everyone seemed eager to get back, and I was swept along with them.
When we arrived in English class I sat down, and
glanced at Tom. He sat next to Laura Sunset in English classes, and seemed to
purposefully avoid eye contact with me, choosing to look out of the window
instead. I frowned. Perhaps for once Will Freckles was right. Perhaps Tom had allowed
greed to take over him, and decided to keep all the sweets to himself!
Since none of us had won the competition, we saw no
point in keeping our outfits on. I shrugged off my hoodie and placed it in my
bag. Choco left his cap on his desk and Will had stuffed his hat in his locker
on his way down the hall, while Eric fiddled about with his sunglasses, putting
them on the top of his head then in his trouser pocket.
Halfway through our spelling test there was a knock at
the door. In came the teacher from Year 6 and behind him, being dragged by the
foot, was Billy, snoozing away.
“Miss, you forgot him, again,” he said.
“Oh my, so sorry,” Our granny-old teacher got to her
feet and went over to Billy. Both teachers prodded Billy a couple of times to
wake him up.
While this was going on I whispered in Choco’s ear,
“After class let’s pounce on him down the hall to Maths.”
Choco looked puzzled, “Who, Billy?”
“No, no! Tom Sandy. We’ll ask him about the sweets.
He’ll have to answer us straight.”
Choco nodded.
Billy Snooze had finally woken up, and walked over to
his desk next to Poppy Petal, who was reading her book, out of Mrs. Hazycurls’
view.
“Right Billy,” said Mrs. Hazycurls, “take out your
spelling book quickly and I’ll say the words again. The rest of you just listen
carefully; make sure you haven’t missed out any words.”
“What words?” Laura Sunset called.
Mrs. Hazycurls blinked, “The words for the spelling
test, Laura.”
“There was a spelling test?”
Mrs. Hazycurls sighed.
__________
We would have
pounced on Tom Sandy after class, if only Choco and I had not gotten into
trouble. We couldn’t help but whisper to each other about Tom’s weird
behaviour, and kept glancing over at him. Mrs. Hazycurls warned us to keep
quiet a number of times, and to pay attention to the spelling test, for we were
both rather bad at spelling. She also seemed to have a suspicion that we were
discussing the spelling test words, which we weren’t, for the bag of sweets was
the only thing on our minds.
Nevertheless, after my third attempt to quietly tell
Choco an idea of mine on how to confront Tom Sandy, Mrs. Hazycurls rapped her
pen on her desk and called,
“Eggster Bold and Choco Stix, since you can’t seem to
listen to me and keep quiet during the test I’m afraid I’m going to have to
split you up. Eggster, will you kindly bring your chair to my desk, thank you.”
I was hot with embarrassment, and Will Freckles didn’t
help with his sniggering. Dragging my chair to her desk, I sat down awkwardly,
not daring to glance back at Tom, or anyone for that matter. I tried to ignore all
the eye’s staring at me. Mrs. Hazycurls, however, wasn’t finished,
“After the lesson I would like to have a word with
both you and Choco.”
And so when the bell rang, instead of hurrying out of
the class we were held back and made to stand at our teacher’s desk. She got
straight to the point,
“Disobeying the rules of your teacher is something I
take very seriously. Sharing your work in a test is not something that I
approve of either.”
Choco shook his head quickly, “But we weren’t doing
that, miss.”
I was quick to agree, and I could tell Mrs. Hazycurls
wanted to believe us, but was a little sceptical. She just sighed and then
said,
“Well, to be sure this doesn’t happen again, I shall
be giving you detention at lunch time.”
We began to protest, but that didn’t help, and she
seemed even surer of her punishment now.
“You will have detention, and that is that. Now, you
may run along to your lesson.”
We trudged out into the hallway, and of course, there
was no sign of Tom.
“Well,” Choco sighed, “We’re too late.”
We went over to our lockers and swapped our English
books for our Maths books. A few other students, who were not too keen to go to
their next lessons, still lingered about the hall. Will Freckles was one of
them.
“So what did Miss want?” he asked us, fiddling with
the padlock on his locker like he couldn’t quite close it. This was a trick we
often used to waste more time out of lesson. “Suspected one of us to have
cheated from the other,” I replied.
“Was she right?”
“No,” said Choco, “Though we’re still in trouble.”
“Shouldn’t you boys be in class? A gruff voice, that
sounded like it had a terrible frog in its throat, came from behind us. It was
Mr. Croaky, our Science teacher.
“Yes,” Will said, “But, we were... just admiring the
view.”
“What view?” he looked around.
Choco and I both took a hold of one of Will’s arms,
“Nothing,” we both said, and hurried him off to class. When
it came to excuses, Will was definitely the worst at them.
